I refuse to buy NVidia so I guess that makes me a AMD-by-default guy. Even so, there is no way I'm going to pre-order something that doesn't even have concrete specs yet. I cannot fathom why anyone would pre-order a 290x at this point in time.

Reminds me of VW cars in Greece during the '90s. They were massively popular but the market was small and hence of low priority for the Germans. The result was that right after they were announced, even before they were tested, people would swarm in order to get one of those that would find their way to the country. Far too many buyers for the available cars, so most of them would pay a sum in advance in order to enter a priority/waiting list of several months while final price was not even set. They too,were paying a sum in advance for a car they weren't exactly sure how it compared to the rest of its class ,while accepting the fact they would eventually had to pay down the road thousands of euros more than the price the car had the day they made the deposit. I would never do it,personally.